You'd think that Congress giving Verizon such a hard time about that whopping new ETF (early termination fine) would have given ATT pause, but no. They're following right along and both smartphones and netbooks will carry a painful $325 ETF if you sign a new contract or renew your contract starting June 1, 2010. Low end phones and non-smartphone messaging phone ETFs are reduced from $175 to $150.

If you're currently in a contract this won't affect you, and obviously it won't cost you any bucks if you're already out of contract (as long as you don't renew when that shiny new iPhone 4G comes out around June if history is any indicator).

Now, we can kind see Verizon's motivation because they've been super-sizing their smartphone subsidies by more than the usual $200 off retail. But typically AT&T charges just $200 more to buy a phone without a contract commitment, so they're either going to start offering smarpthones on contract at better discounts. Or this is all because of the iPhone since that's the only phone that's more heavily subsidized.